Tag: dynamic online learning

Online master’s degrees at accredited universities have become increasingly popular over recent years. Many programs, like the ones offered at Brandeis GPS, cater to professionals who are working full time and are seeking a degree to move the needle on their career. Truly asynchronous programs – where students aren’t required to log into a class at a certain time – allow students to set their own schedule when it comes to their academic study. But for some online learners, the lack of structure can be a challenge. Below are some tips to help you achieve the perfect work-life-school balance while pursuing an online degree.

Schedule Your TimeSchedule your school time just like you would schedule an appointment or meeting. Consistency can be key. And don’t forget to get creative with your study time. Have a long train ride as part of your commute? Take care of your weekly readings while you ride. Drive to work? See if your text book has an audio version and listen in the car. Find a regular time to do your coursework, and soon it will become a part of your daily routine.

Find Your Place of ProductivityAsk yourself when you are most productive. Perhaps it’s on that long train ride where you easily focus. Are you most productive on Sunday afternoons while sitting in your local library? Do you enjoy staying in your pajamas and doing work from your kitchen table? There is no right answer as everyone has different zones of productivity. Make sure the space where you want to work is available and distraction-free in advance. You will get everything done a lot faster if you go in knowing this is your time and place for coursework.

Take a BreakIf you have an assignment deadline approaching, you may be tempted to come home after a long day of work and open your computer to get your schoolwork done as quickly as you can. Don’t do that – you want to put your best foot forward! Separate your job from your coursework, take some time to relax, go to the gym, or eat a snack. Keep your brain power focused on what you’re doing so you can achieve results that make you proud.

Participate and Stay EngagedIn an online classroom, it is easy to keep quiet and only participate when necessary. Don’t take that approach: you’re here to learn, after all! Schools like GPS intentionally offer small classes to foster engagement and collaboration among your peers and instructors.

Stay tuned for more tips on how to be a productive online student, and don’t forget to reach out to your advisor or instructor for guidance.

Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) is dedicated to developing innovative programs for working professionals. GPS offers 11 fully online, part-time master’s degrees and one online graduate certificate. With three 10-week terms each year, Brandeis GPS provides exceptional programs with a convenient and flexible online approach. Courses are small by design and led by industry experts who deliver individualized support and professional insights. For more information on our programs visit the Brandeis GPS website.

When you hear the word “writing,” what image jumps into your head? Likely it’s not picking up a pen or opening a notebook, as most writing today takes place on digital platforms. Whether we’re drafting copy for a website, social media, a blog post, or an ad, writing for digital environments introduces a whole new set of factors to consider as we seek to achieve our writing goals. For example, identifying strategic keywords when writing online content can help optimize a piece to successfully reach a target audience.

It’s also critical that we understand why various online platforms require different types of writing, whether it means monitoring character counts or using hashtags or abbreviations. In marketing, these tactics, along with others, are important to consider to make sure that whatever is being marketed is done so in an efficient and effective way.

Writing for Digital Environments is an online course that provides detailed information about how to write copy and messaging for various digital formats. Part of the MS In Digital Marketing and Design graduate program, the course subject matter gives special attention to differences in form factor, audience targeting, and SEO (search engine optimization) implications of various types of content. Content marketing tactics are explored in detail. View more information and course prerequisites here.

Those interested in the course who do not yet wish to pursue a full master’s degree can still participate. At Brandeis GPS, you can take up to two online courses without officially enrolling in a program. This is a great opportunity to get to know our programs and approach to online learning. View our full course catalog here, and preview our spring 2017 courses here.

Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) is dedicated to developing innovative programs for working professionals. GPS offers 11 fully online, part-time master’s degrees and one online graduate certificate. With three 10-week terms each year, Brandeis GPS provides exceptional programs with a convenient and flexible online approach. Courses are small by design and led by industry experts who deliver individualized support and professional insights. For more information on our programs visit the Brandeis GPS website.

Whether or not you’re a professional project manager, negotiating skills are crucial to the success of any project, small or large. When working with others, conflicts will always arise, but being able to control these situations and find “win-win” solutions that work for all parties involved is an incredibly valuable tool. Yet, negotiating is not an easy task and requires a wide range of strategies and skillsets. For example, you might need to create values by encouraging open communication between parties and finding shared interests so that both sides get something out of the situation. Changing your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) to boost your bargaining power in a negotiation is another useful tool.

To help project managers and those interested in conflict resolution acquire new negotiation skills, Brandeis GPS offers an online Negotiating and Conflict Resolution course that provides a framework to understand the basis of conflict, to select an appropriate conflict resolution strategy, and to employ tactics that optimize results for both individuals and organizations. As part of the MS in Project and Program Management degree program, this part-time, fully online course will explore several approaches to conflict resolution that differ among collocated and virtual teams. Students will also understand how cultural differences, interests, and values influence negotiation strategy and tactics. Topics will include:

Value creation and value claiming

BATNA strategies

Ethical and unethical negotiating tactics

By the end of the course, students will develop a systematic and positive approach to negotiating with colleagues, bosses, clients, other stakeholders, and external groups of all kinds–in ways that equip you to deal also with all kinds of conditions and circumstances.

Those interested in the course who do not yet wish to pursue a full master’s degree can still participate. At Brandeis GPS, you can take up to two online courses without officially enrolling in a program. This is a great opportunity to get to know our programs and approach to online learning. View our full course catalog here, and preview our spring 2017 courses here.

Questions Contact our enrollment team at gps@brandeis.edu or 781-736-8787.

Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) is dedicated to developing innovative programs for working professionals. GPS offers 11 fully online, part-time master’s degrees and one online graduate certificate. With three 10-week terms each year, Brandeis GPS provides exceptional programs with a convenient and flexible online approach. Courses are small by design and led by industry experts who deliver individualized support and professional insights. For more information on our programs visit the Brandeis GPS website.

Consumers today have so many options regardless of what product or service they’re looking for, and for marketers, it’s really important to use available data to better understand how to meet consumer needs and influence behavior. By understanding what consumers are really looking for, and how they behave when searching out products or services, marketers can work on targeting the right audiences in the ways that will really appeal to them. By tracking behavior and predicting how consumers conduct their searches, marketing firms are able to narrow down exactly how to target the right customer, so that the supplier benefits in finding a customer, and the customer benefits as they are able to find exactly what they are looking for. In analyzing data and identifying consumer trends, marketers are able to build models that will help launch marketing plans that reflect changes and consistencies in consumer behavior, to help plan for future marketing initiatives.

For those interested in this fast-paced industry, Brandeis GPS is offering a course for the spring 2017 term in Marketing and Customer Analytics. The course will provide an introduction to advanced analytics and measurement in the areas of social networking and media, web and marketing analytics. The topics covered include the history, tracking, performance, optimization, metrics, analysis, visualization, decision making, reporting and best practices in each of those three areas. E-commerce will also be covered as it relates to web and marketing.

Those interested in the course who do not yet wish to pursue a full master’s degree can still participate. At Brandeis GPS, you can take up to two online courses without officially enrolling in a program. This is a great opportunity to get to know our programs and approach to online learning. View our full course catalog here, and preview our spring 2017 courses here.

Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) is dedicated to developing innovative programs for working professionals. GPS offers 11 fully online, part-time master’s degrees and one online graduate certificate. With three 10-week terms each year, Brandeis GPS provides exceptional programs with a convenient and flexible online approach. Courses are small by design and led by industry experts who deliver individualized support and professional insights. For more information on our programs visit the Brandeis GPS website.

Many of today’s organizations seek to build productive work environments where teamwork is encouraged and tasks are completed in a timely yet flexible manner. As the traditional office setting becomes increasingly obsolete, new technologies have allowed colleagues to work together from different time zones and different locations across the world. While companies and clients don’t always have the opportunity to have face-to-face interaction during the development process, Agile Project Management allows for constant communication and integration of changes in a collaborative manner. The goal is to ensure that all stakeholders remain satisfied as they work together toward project completion with input from all parties, and without delaying the development process. Agile Project Management empowers project stakeholders to collaborate and execute a plan while quickly responding to changes in the industry.

To help project managers adapt to and embrace this dynamic approach, Brandeis GPS offers an online Agile Project Management course that covers characteristics and delivery frameworks. The course also explores how agile methods differ from traditional project management, along with how to recognize projects that may be suitable for agile techniques. Topics covered include Scrum values, roles and deliverables; additional agile and iterative methods; scalability and enterprise-wide considerations.

Those interested in the course who do not yet wish to pursue a full master’s degree can still participate. At Brandeis GPS, you can take up to two online courses without officially enrolling in a program. This is a great opportunity to get to know our programs and approach to online learning. View our full course catalog here, and preview our spring 2017 courses here.

Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) is dedicated to developing innovative programs for working professionals. GPS offers 11 fully online, part-time master’s degrees and one online graduate certificate. With three 10-week terms each year, Brandeis GPS provides exceptional programs with a convenient and flexible online approach. Courses are small by design and led by industry experts who deliver individualized support and professional insights. For more information on our programs visit the Brandeis GPS website.

Brandeis developed the program, which will be offered online, in response to the growing need for professionals highly skilled in the development of digital learning resources to support the rapid proliferation of online education courses and e-Learning powered training programs.

The Advisory Board reports that the demand for graduates with instructional design skills has increased in recent years, with a 63 percent increase in total job postings from 2010 to 2013, and a 50 percent increase in job postings for instructional designers and technologists. They also found that employers increasingly demand instructional designers with content development and collaboration skills.

“As public and private interest and money flow into this space, the need for highly trained professionals versed in the art and science of instructional design has almost certainly never been higher,” said Jason Gorman, a member of the professional advisory board for Brandeis’ master of science in online instructional design and technology program and vice president of learning experience design services at Six Red Marbles, the largest US-based development house for learning materials.

The Brandeis program will prepare students to harness educational technologies in the development of online courseware, use iterative and formative course development processes, and apply evidence-based learning methodologies to the design of dynamic online learning courses.

The program includes courses focusing on how to effectively apply various instructional design methodologies and principles of learning science to online course development, as well as courses focusing on the creative utilization of instructional technologies such as learning management systems and rich interactive courseware authoring tools. The program is designed to help instructional designers, educational technologists, and training and development specialists to successfully manage instructional design projects, work effectively with subject matter experts, apply evidence-based course design principles, and develop dynamic learning content to support fully-online course and program design and delivery.

Six core courses and four electives are required (a total of 30 graduate credits). Students may enroll in up to two courses before officially applying for admission.

“Instructional design has become a crucial skill set for both educational institutions and training and development organizations across a variety of industries and sectors,” said Brian Salerno, who chairs the new program. “The Internet and mobile platforms have emerged as a desirable delivery medium for learning and training materials, as well as educational courses. Instructional designers help organizations not just transition their learning content online, but help them to design effective online courses that harness all the advantages that instructional technology has to offer.”

Program graduates will be able to:

Apply evidence-based learning science and online pedagogical principles to the design, development, facilitation, and assessment of online courses and programs.

Evaluate and integrate instructional technologies, platforms, and collaborative tools for use in diverse instructional settings and applications.

Demonstrate creativity and innovation in the application of instructional design principles and technologies to respond to instructional challenges and emerging trends.

Lead and manage online instructional design and technology teams and projects, utilizing effective written and oral communication strategies.

This is the eighth part-time, online master degree program offered by Brandeis’ division of Graduate Professional Studies. The programs are geared for professionals looking to advance in their fields and keep up-to-date on the latest practices. Students are taught techniques that they can apply immediately in their places of work. The course instructors bring their applied experiences into the online classrooms, and the programs’ professional advisory boards help ensure that the courses and programs remain current and relevant.